WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 3 



plete devotion to the study; both excelled as 

 observers, and the writings of both combine the 

 interest of exact outdoor observation with the 

 charm of good literature. Waterton was born on 

 June 3rd, 1782, at Walton Hall, in the West Riding 

 of Yorkshire, a place which had for several centu- 

 ries been the seat of his family. His father, 

 Thomas Waterton, was a squire, fond of fox-hunt- 

 ing, but with other tastes, well read in literature, 

 and delighting in the observation of the ways of 

 birds and beasts. His grandfather, whose grave 

 is beneath the most northern of a row of old elm 

 trees in the park, was imprisoned in York on ac- 

 count of his known attachment to the cause of the 

 Young Pretender. As he meant to join the rebel 

 forces, the imprisonment probably saved his own 

 life and prevented the ruin of the family. In his 

 grandson's old age, when another white-haired 

 Yorkshire squire was dining at Walton Hall, I 

 remember that Waterton and he reminded one 

 another that their grandfathers had planned to 

 march together to Prince Charley, and that they 

 themselves, so differently are the rights of kings 

 regarded at different ages, when schoolboys to- 

 gether, had gone a-bird's-nesting on a day, in 

 1793, set apart for mourning for the decapitation 

 of Louis XVI. Waterton has himself told the 

 history of his earlier ancestors in an autobiogra- 

 phy which he wrote in 1837 : — 



*'The poet tells us, that the good qualities of 

 man and of cattle descend to their offspring. 

 'Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis.' If this holds 

 good, I ought to be pretty well off, as far as 

 breeding goes; for, on the father's side, I come 



